The Twelve Saddest Exercise Machines

If there's one universal constant in our world, it's that people want to be slimmer, trimmer, and sexier. No matter how attractive a person is, they're never satisfied; it's actually coded into our brains as a survival mechanism, because making you miserable is fun for your brain. And people are willing to pay through the nose to get that last millimeter of fat off, no matter how much it costs, no matter how stupid they look, no matter how insane the idea even is. Here are twelve very, very sad methods trying to cash in on this tragic evolutionary quirk.

1.

The Dumbbell Phone

Ring, ring, ring, ring, dumbbell phone! We're not sure if this describes the device itself, a weight attached to your standard landline phone, or whoever purchased this device. We suspect this is one of those marvellous "unuseless" inventions the Japanese keep cranking out, and God bless them for it.

2.

Home Surfing Machine

Here's a video of the WeSurf Home Surfing Machine in action, essentially designed for all those hydrophobes who nonetheless want to hang ten and shoot the curl and Keanu the Point Break. Needless to say, you'll look just a little stupid while doing it, which is one of the many, many risks one faces with equipment like this, but it could be worse: it could need a pool.

3.

Pilates Reformer

What does this ridiculous device that resembles a torture rack do, exactly? Well, you see, it… Well, what you do is… Look, can we get back to you on this one?

It's actually designed to help with Pilates, which focuses on your core muscles and the alignment of your spine. So this has been in use for decades and no doubt works. But at what cost to one’s dignity?

4.

iGallop

You know, we've done a lot, in our time, to get women to dress up all sexy-like and shove their various womanly bits at camera lenses. But we've never gone quite to the lengths that the creator of the iGallop has.

Supposedly this imitates the action of riding a horse, but the fact that the camera immediately places itself to have booty shoved right into the frame kind of tells us all we need to know about this device's actual design.

5.

Gliding Discs

We've got to admit, the basic idea of these discs are actually really neat. They let you slide across any hard surface, thus allowing you to reach extreme speeds. Which means we want shoe soles made out of the things, because that's going to change everything about basketball for the better.

But call us crazy, we're not really sure what the workout value of a device that can slam your face into concrete actually is.

6.

Velcor Shoes

We can't actually turn up too much about this ridiculous exercise concept. We're assuming that after it was created and distributed, the inventor had realized what he'd done and decided to do us all a favor and die of shame. But as far as we can tell, yes, this existed, and yes, the entire idea was to step onto a Velcro mat, and then try to step off.

Probably a good leg workout, but we really don't want to see what started sticking to that mat after a few weeks.